


Karkat: Ascend

by Aesoleucian



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Land of Pulse and Haze
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 12:45:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/622284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesoleucian/pseuds/Aesoleucian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat and Nepeta go on a quest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Karkat: Ascend

**Author's Note:**

> My first embarrassing Homestuck fanfiction that I was too lazy to come up with a real plot for. I am so thankful for AO3 pesterlog format tutorials.

The very air tastes of iron here and you hate it. You hate constantly having to see that bright red, which reminds you that you're not normal. But most of all, you hate the weird, savage, suffocating smell, and the heat, and the haze that makes you think of pain and fear. You are on the far side of a jagged pillar of stone from one of the large castle complexes of your Land, pressed up against it so as not to look at the enormous beating bloodpushers that make that sick, deep thumping noise and spread the smell of blood.

So you sit sullenly with your back to a spire of black rock, stabbing at the keyboard of your husktop, which you have had to realchemize to waterproof it since the haze gets in everywhere. Or bloodproof it, you guess. Is the haze itself made of blood? You are working on a virus to get Sollux back for destroying your computer, since you have literally nothing better to do, with Trollian open in another window in case someone needs your help. And then you’re interrupted by Nepeta. Again. What the hell is her deal?

\-- arsenicCatnip [AC] began trolling carcinoGeneticist[CG] \--  
AC: :33 *ac jumps on karkittys lap and starts purring* hi karkat!   
AC: :33 oops i mean *ac says hi to karkat*   
CG: WHAT DO YOU WANT?  
AC: :33 *ac looks wounded and her ears droop*   
AC: :33 *she says karkitty dont you ever want to talk to pawple just beclaws you like them?*   
CG: THINK ABOUT THAT QUESTION FOR A MOMENT AND SEE IF YOU CAN’T GET YOUR THINKPAN TO REARRANGE ITSELF INTO A SHAPE THAT IS CAPABLE OF USING DEDUCTIVE LOGIC TO UNDERSTAND WHAT’S WRONG WITH THAT STATEMENT. THEN IF YOU HAVEN’T GOT ANYTHING USEFUL TO SAY I’LL JUST GO BACK TO SLICING IMPS INTO FINE GOOEY FRAGMENTS AND DROPPING THEM INTO THE BOILING FUCKING LAKE OF BLOOD THAT FOR SOME REASON SURROUNDS MY HIVE NOW.  
AC: :33 *ac asks its that what that is??*   
CG: YES.  
AC: :33 but why is it that color? i mean how do you know its blood?   
AC: :33 *ac asks that*   
CG: YOU OF ALL PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW BLOOD WHEN YOU SEE IT. AND ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU SMELL IT.  
CG: NOW CAN I RETURN TO COLLECTING UTTERLY GRATUITOUS AMOUNTS OF GRIST AND LOOKING FOR SHITTY SIDEQUESTS TO RELIEVE SOME OF MY CRUSHING BOREDOM?  
AC: :33 *ac cocks her head to one side and smiles*   
AC: :33 do you want to do a quest with me?   
AC: :33 i could actually be there purretty quickly!   
CG: …  
CG: IT KIND OF DEPRESSES ME THAT I ACTUALLY HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAN GO ON QUESTS WITH A PANDEAD CATGIRL.  
AC: :33 *ac asks is that a yes?*   
CG: YEAH. I CAN ALREADY TELL I’M GOING TO REGRET IT.  
AC: :33 yay! wait right there!   
\-- arsenicCatnip [AC] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] \--  
CG: FUCK. I TAKE IT BACK.

———

You have no clue how Nepeta finds you, since she’s not your server player and there should be no way she could track you here. But fifteen minutes or so after she signs off you see her come bounding carelessly along the ledge with a stupidly wide grin on her face. Was she just waiting to get asked?

“Hi Karkitty!” she says, sliding a little as she stops in front of you. “What quest do you want to do?”

“I changed my mind,” you growl, slouching further behind your husktop in an attempt to avoid looking at her stupid hopeful cat face. “Go back to LoLCaT and have a fucking tea party with your consorts.”

She peeks around the side of your husktop, an exaggerated pout on her face. “You agreed to this, Karkitty. I wouldn't have come if you didn't say yes.”

“Fuck,” you mumble at your screen, half at the code and half at her. “Fine.” You stand, snapping your husktop shut and captchaloguing it in one movement. “Since I’ve got another fighter now, we can do an advanced quest. What level are you?”

Nepeta rolls her eyes. “They don’t have numbers! Right now it’s something like ‘Scratching Post Decimator’ or something like that.”

“We’ll just have to level up as we’re walking there, unless you have some kind of rocket, because I never alchemized anything like that.” You pull out your sickle and start to walk around the other side of the outcrop, taking long strides to make the most of your scant height advantage (you’re about two inches taller than her, which is just sad considering she is the shortest troll you know).

She quickly catches up with you on four legs (damn her) and starts walking beside you. “So where are we going?”

“Fuck if I know,” you say in what you hope sounds like a neutral voice. Inside you are berating yourself for being so stupid. You have a map of LoPaH on your husktop, but instead of looking at it to get the faintest idea where you’re going you just had your claws up your nook fucking around with ~ATH the entire time. “I mean, we’re going to find my Denizen. But I’ll leave you to figure out where it is.”

“Why do I have to do it?” Nepeta asks, looking at you with a kind of pitiful expression on her face (but platonically, obviously) and swerving at the last second to avoid crashing into a rock pillar. “Don’t you know?”

“My job is not knowing things,” you say with an attempt at loftiness. “It’s telling other people what to do. That is why I am a natural born leader and you are part of my team.”

She rolls her eyes again, makes a quiet little "ugh" sound, and turns to scamper ahead around a corner. When you catch sight of her again she’s below on the rocky shore, crouched next to one of your consorts, an awful squishy red pulsating lizard thing with what seems to be a bone cage on its outside. She’s talking to it, which is probably something only she would do. After a few more seconds, she pats it on the head and bounds back up the steep slope and announces, “You’re lucky we were already walking this way! It happens to be over there!” At this last, she points nearly dead ahead, and you crane your neck trying to see anything through the smog. There is maybe a giant hazy something in the distance, but you can’t make out anything else. "You're also lucky I didn't eat that adorable tasty little consort."

“Come on then,” you say, stomping ahead to cross the bridge that links your little island to the crenelated towers that house those disgusting giant bloodpushers. You scowl and brace yourself as you approach the first tunnel through one of the towers, tensing in anticipation of the deep, resonant, squishy thumping you can already feel in the soles of your ratty walking appendage protection shells. Worse, it’s damp and the smell of blood is even stronger here. You have to fight yourself to keep from breaking into a run, and when you’re out the other side you let out a breath and your shoulders relax a little. Nepeta, damn her, seems to notice, because she sounds worried when she speaks.

“Karkitty, are you okay?”

“Yeah, peachy,” you growl, glowering at the next tower that will take you into a small labyrinth of stairways that crisscross each other dizzily, never too far from that awful noise. “I cannot think of anything in the fucking universe I’d rather be doing than walking around a land covered in some kind of weird fucking mutant blood—” your voice catches— “going to what has about a seventy per cent chance of being my death.”

Nepeta is silent. When you sneak a look over at her she seems to be staring at some exciting thing off in the smog somewhere to her left. You’re kind of relieved that she doesn’t seem to have noticed your slip-up, but also a little peeved that she apparently doesn’t care enough to listen when you’re talking to her. After all, you are the leader, aren’t you?

“Hey catgirl,” you say angrily, and her head whips around. Her face is reproachful as she says, “What?”

You feel a little foolish and have to fight down a flush so she won’t see your color. “Look at me when I’m talking, okay?”

“But there’s so much exciting stuff over there! Like waterfalls of blood and pretty tasty meaty things!”

You grimace at the thought of trying to eat those. “Whatever. I’d take a nice pre-processed grubloaf any day.” Seemingly at random, she grabs your hand and starts dragging you up a flight of stairs. “What the fuck!” you splutter, trying to wrench out of her grasp. She smiles disarmingly at you and, against your own will, you are somewhat disarmed. You rearm immediately.

“It’s so nice here! I don’t know why you hate it so much! It smells tasty and your consorts are cute and we’re going to fight a denizen!”

You rack your thinkpan trying to remember whether and how many times you've told her that you hate it here, choking on a reply that was probably just going to be something along the lines of “What the fuck?” again. Luckily she gets distracted by something on a wall and you finally get free of her, striding ahead to the staircase that leads down onto a large flat island, further from the smell of blood. She notices and runs after you, but your arms are folded, ha! and she can’t take your hand again.

The entire journey goes like that—you try to stay away from her and she tries to cheer you up and asks inane questions, some of which you deign to answer. You swear she really has some kind of mental problem, which makes you feel kind of bad but whatever. By the time you reach the hulking dome of rock that is hive to your denizen, you are thoroughly tired of having to force yourself to be angry at her because she won't shut up.

She stops to stare and the spike-infested lump of rock where it’s supposed to live, towering black against the red-purple sky. Even you are slightly intimidated, although you’re not telling her that since leaders do not know fear.

“Well? What are you just standing around for?” you ask, and start to walk in without her. It is a leaderly quality! You have to go in first because you are the leader, and also because you want to be a little further away from her, which you are beginning to feel increasingly guilty about.

You enter a vast hall with a ceiling so high it seems to be bigger than the original structure, and what look like intricate pictures painted in blood on it. Thankfully it doesn't smell so bad in here, and instead of being oppressively hot it's kind of chilly. “Wooh!” Nepeta calls through her hands at the walls, and it echoes. She jumps up and down a little in apparent delight and starts to call again before you clamp a hand over her mouth and hiss, “What the hell, Nepeta! Now it definitely knows we’re here!” 

“sorry,” she says in a small voice, half whisper and half whimper. You squash your reaction.

“Yeah, you fucking better be,” you growl. “Come on, and stay behind me for once in your life!”

She pads demurely behind you for all of a minute through the dark hall, lit by weird red light coming from nowhere in particular, and then she gets bored again and starts peeking into random crannies in the walls, looking for small creatures she can eat.

You drag her back to your side by the tail and hiss, “Stay behind me, dumbass! Something’s going to come out soon.”

Almost as if they had been waiting on your words (and who knew, maybe SGRUB was designed with a sense of ironic timing), a multicolored tide of imps flows from hidden crevices to engage the two of you. Instinctively, both of you jump toward each other to go back to back. You slaughter the imps within a minute, but you know there’s worse coming now. As Nepeta bites the head off one, you hear the cheery ping that means she just levelled up, and she’s staring at the space where she can probably see her new stats.

“I’m a Cat’s Claw Amazon now!” she says loudly. “SHHHH!” you answer.

“Yeah, yeah,” she mumbles, extending and retracting her claws with nervous energy. “Stay behind Karkat at all times, yes sir.”

You haven’t gone too far into the tunnel on the opposite side of the hall when you’re attacked by basilisks. You’ve never wished more that your partner didn’t also use a close-range melee weapon, but it can’t be helped now, and Nepeta’s actually pretty good. You supposed she ought to be since she’s been hunting for food from the time she was a grub. You slice a basilisk’s head off cleanly and hear a ping, and determinedly do not look at your new stats. For one thing, you can’t afford to in the middle of a grief, and for another you really don’t want to care. You mean that you don’t care, that’s what you mean.

“What are you now?” Nepeta whispers as you dispatch the last of the basilisks.

“Fuck if I know,” you say and keep walking. She sighs quietly and follows.

It’s a while and several more levels each before you follow the smell (why did it have to be that, you think) down to an enormous chamber that is probably at the very bottom of the castle. To your disgust it also contains a giant, lazily bubbling pool of blood. Presumably your denizen is there, which sucks bulge because it means you can’t sneak up on it while it’s asleep.

“What do we do now?” Nepeta asks uncertainly, shifting her weight back and forth, still pushing her claws in and out.

“We wake it up and then fuck it up, what else?” you say. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she says confidently, standing still at last. “Let’s kick its ass!”

“HEY!” you shout at the pool. “COME OUT HERE AND DIE!” Nothing happens for a moment, and then the blood surges up, washing your knees with an unexpected sticky tide. From the pool emerges an enormous crab with a jewelled shell and twelve giant glittering eyes, bizarrely supported by a serpentine body. At least all those eyes make more targets to aim for, you think.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” says the crab politely, and you feel kind of stupid and much less ready to kill it. “You’ve made a bit of a mess of your session and no mistake. I’d recommend going godtier.”

You run at it even though it's a really stupid idea and there's no reason to do it besides the fact that it's probably what a leader would do. You are going to die here before you can escape, but you want to make sure at least one person survives.

“Get out, Nepeta!” you yell as you attempt to strike at the crab’s underbelly, but when it picks you up by the shirt and you’re hanging there flailing and shouting, you can see she’s still transfixed. There’s a weird expression on her face—partly curiosity, partly suppressed laughter, and partly determination as she stares into several of its eyes.

“Put him down, Crabby, and let’s make a deal,” she says loudly.

“I can only put him down if I’m assured he won’t try to attack me again.”

“Fine!” you spit at the opposite wall, captchaloguing your sickle and holding up your hands to show they’re empty. It drops you and you land awkwardly on the floor, almost twisting your ankle.

“Goodness,” it says in what sounds like a reproving tone. “I’m only trying to help, you know! Most denizens would just kill you straight off for coming this early in your session! I was asleep, you know, and we don't like being woken.”

“You said Karkitty should go godtier,” Nepeta says. “How does he do that?”

“Don’t I get a fucking say?” you mumble, and she swipes at your side, indicating shut the hell up!

The giant crab clears its throat, or at least makes a horrible gargling hacking noise that could be the crab equivalent. “You have to die in your quest cocoon,” it says, “of which I happen to know the location.” You were wondering what that mark on the map was, a red symbol outlined in black, that looked like dripping blood. It was the only thing you hadn’t been able to identify, so it must be the quest cocoon.

You suddenly realize the crab has stopped speaking. “Okay!” says Nepeta brightly, and grabs you by the arm to drag you off. “We’ll do that, mister Crabsnake sir! See you later!”

“What the fuck just happened?” you ask as she pulls you up out of the bowels of the earth.

“Crabsnake told me how to get to the quest cocoon, and I told him I’d get him some shiny thing he wants that’s around there.”

“Okay, that is a completely transparent ruse to get us to come back to him, you know that, right? We’re not going back!” you say, twisting out of her grip. “He’s clearly sending us to get him some inconsequential thing, at which point he will fucking crush us like the idiots we are!”

“But godtiers can’t die unless it’s fair or they’re saving someone,” Nepeta says, completely unfazed. “So if you go down there, he can’t hurt you!”

“He can’t kill me, there’s a giant fucking difference.” Nepeta shrugs and runs back into the entrance hall, bare feet pattering loudly in the huge silence. 

“We could just furrow it into his pool,” she suggests over her shoulder. “And run! Easy.”

“And how do you know he’s not just convincing you to stab me?” You aren’t really that excited about going to another big pillar of rock to get killed. You like not getting killed.

“I’ve heard about this from my consorts. Quest cocoons really work. They couldn’t tell me where to find mine, though. Maybe only the denizens know.”

“You should get a map,” you say. “It’s on mine.”

———

You think it’s the relief that makes the walk back easier than the one there. You both just didn’t die and now you’re giddy and you can hardly be angry at all. Somehow, even Nepeta is managing to be less annoying, but you can’t tell whether it’s her or you.

It takes several hours but at last you’re standing at the base of the rock pillar that presumably has some sort of deadly trap at the top, although you find yourself less able to doubt your denizen now. It’s a hard climb up for you—Nepeta scampers up the crags like she was born a woolly mountainbeast—and you arrive at the top huffing, sweaty, and dangerously flushed. In the face, you mean. Not in the—oh, forget it. You finally find yourself looking at a brown slab of stone slashed diagonally with dripping red, surrounded by four pillars and supporting a brown cocoon. It looks dry and uncomfortable, and much too large for you.

You shake your head slightly and walk to the slab. Nepeta stays at the edge where she was sitting when you arrived. She doesn’t speak, and looks unusually solemn—is she also thinking about how you’re going to have to die soon? You step onto the slab and scoot awkwardly halfway into the cocoon. You turn to look at Nepeta and she rises uncertainly to her feet, wringing her hands slightly. She’s nervous, she doesn’t want to kill you. Well, you hope that's why she's nervous. 

“Do it,” you croak, suddenly dry in the mouth. You lay down and close your eyes to make it easier for her. You really don’t want to die.

You can hear her breathing, standing over you and inhaling erratically—you hear her claws come out, go back in, come out again. You try not to tremble so she can pretend you’re already dead.

There’s a horrible pain in your neck and you wake up.

Everything around you is gold, and when you look down at yourself to see if you’ve turned godtier yet, you’re irritated but intrigued to find that you’re wearing loose gold clothing with weird useless shoulder pads. Although it does look kind of good on you.

And then you’re floating. Well. This must be some dream power. You float out of what recuperacoon, the slime sliding cleanly off you, and to the window. It looks out on a golden city. You can see three other towers from your room, and you briefly wonder if there are other trolls in them. You’re about to climb out the window and try to fly to them when there’s a pulling sensation and the world is red again.

You sit up, gasping, and you have a normal body again. You sigh, you breathe, you twist your fingers to make sure they’re there, and you notice that your sleeves aren’t black anymore, they’re brown.

“What happened?” you whisper, looking up into Nepeta’s face, which looks a little shaky, presumably because she just cut your throat.

When she finally speaks, she sounds impressively calm—“First I cat open your throat. And you were lying there and your blood was everywhere—” did she not notice? Does she think you’re a light maroon?—“and at first nothing happened and I was scared it was really a trick…” She appears to remember that she’s speaking to you. “But then all these little flying shrimp thingies came over the edge of the rock and crawled onto you and stayed there, and then you started glowing and hovering and I had to look away and when I looked back your neck was okay and you were wearing that,” she gestures.

You stand up awkwardly, bringing your head two feet above hers, and she helps you down like a true gentletroll. She bows and giggles, probably in relief, and you let yourself smile.

You tell her, “You don’t have to leave. Or actually, we could both leave. Let’s go have a fucking tea party on LoLCaT.”

She's already bounding down the spire in excitement, shouting, "I'm going to furce you to try every kind of tea I own!"


End file.
